


to the strongest

by trash_rendar



Category: Final Fantasy IX
Genre: Drabble, Gen, a girl and her eidolon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-24
Updated: 2019-08-24
Packaged: 2020-09-24 11:28:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20357728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trash_rendar/pseuds/trash_rendar
Summary: the princess dreams, and in dreaming, comes to the place where He rests.





	to the strongest

the princess dreams, and in dreaming, comes to the place where He rests.

it looks like what she's always imagined lay at the bottom of the waterfall outside alexandria's borders, so much so that for a moment she thinks she's tipped over the edge with the current and fallen all the way down, down, down. firelight slips, shimmering, through the placid surface of the waters above, where her city and her people and her whole world are burning, just like her other people, the ones she had known once but forgotten. she watches it flicker through the hole the castle's sword left in His head, and sinks deeper and deeper into the dark depths.

_it's all gone so wrong_, she thinks, not for the first time.

she gives a start when He replies: _these are difficult times_. 

the royal pendant is still on its chain around her neck, cracked and chipped and disintegrating, suspended above her as she falls deeper. _you were destroyed_. _the castle-- i saw you die_.

_perhaps, _He muses. even now, even in this metaphysical sanctum, His form is corpselike; the stone and mortar of his arms and head is crumbling, and his wings are withered and dead. their detritus stains the water with murk, pollutes it with the essence of death. _but then, __perhaps not_.

_i don't understand_.

_not as I can, no. know that I am with you, child, and let that be enough._

she does, and lets her eyes fall shut. _lend me your strength, Alexander_, she pleads. _give me the strength to set the world right_.

_I cannot grant what you already posses_s.

_i possess nothing_, she insists. _i couldn't stop mother. i couldn't stop kuja. i couldn't stop any of this death or destruction. what use does alexandria have for a princess who cannot protect her own people?_

_one could put the same question to its eidolon_, He rumbles.

_i didn't mean--_

_do not blame yourself unduly. if the world will be saved, it will be by you, not Me. it is not from without where you shall find the strength you seek, but from within._

_will i know when i've found it?_

_only once the work is done._ his tone is firm yet gentle, like doctor tot's, or how she imagines her father's voice. _you are worthy - you have always been. have the courage to believe so, and go forth. the rest will follow._

_then that's what i must do, she decides._

the string of pennants (the very same) is brushing against her gloved hand, reds and blues and yellows fluttering in the airless deep. she lets it run against her fingers before grabbing hold; it arrests her descent until she's hanging before the massive, crumbling mortarwork of His body. for the first time, she really watches the fragments of flagstone and masonry suspended in the waters around her, and wonders if they're breaking away from His castle or falling back into place - and then the string gives a rude jerk and hoists her back towards the water's surface, trailing long strands of raven-dark hair in her wake.

(out of death, rebirth - there's a lord avon play with that theme, but the title eludes her - )

_when you wake, remember you are Queen_, Alexander commands.

_I will_, Garnet promises. and for the rest of her days, she always does.


End file.
